Just like pay-as-you-go contracts, is construction becoming ‘design as-you-go’?
Not that I have been around forever, but I do recall a time when the design for a project was almost set in stone before the main contractor stepped on site. Too often these days, the design has not yet been finalised months into the building phase, and in some cases even altered right up to PC dates.
While in many cases, this gives developers the opportunity to be flexible for prospective buyers or tenants, it also means that the design team is constantly under pressure to get information out, or amend designs to beat the on-site progress, rather than have the time during construction to pick up any issues or details that may have been missed. Often the construction phase is a good time to discuss ways to improve the buildability of the design, but it seems now days it is used to actually finalise design, not refine it.
It also means that during construction design meetings are ongoing, and weekly design sessions are not uncommon all the way through construction. This leads to site progress meetings becoming design sessions, and once again refinement is not done, but rather redesign/design, meaning another critical phase is brushed over.
While in a lot of ways this is not too much of an issue, there are certain things that I would like to highlight that I personally see as a hindrance to affective design, which can impact overall profitability of all involved.
- Having to design throughout a project means that both consultant and the backroom draughting team are continuously busy and it becomes difficult to manage the team’s productivity and time on a project, which often leads to needing additional staff to cover for others as they get pulled back into design on projects that were into building phase months ago. It becomes difficult to manage project workflow and assign staff accordingly, due to them constantly being pulled back into design. This makes it difficult to ever have enough staff when things get busy but cashflow is not there due to designing on projects that are beyond design phase.
- The design during construction is ALWAYS urgent, meaning that staff need to drop everything they are doing to get info out on time, to avoid being the reason there are delays. This is despite it not being their fault that limited time has been given to properly do the design work.
- No additional fees are paid for re-designing multiple times on a project. This is not a gripe to get more money, but rather to highlight that it is difficult to hire the additional staff needed when no additional money is available to do so. It also touches on item 1 where workflow is difficult to manage, and when added to the cashflow issue of no additional fees, it is difficult to get the best result for everyone.
All of the above is manageable of course, but the real issue for consultants (or at least this one) is that despite this new era of design as you go, the risk on budget and information being issued on time falls squarely on the designers/consultants, despite us being pulled from side to side and having to constantly re-design, or do estimates with limited information and time. I believe if the risk of not having the design almost done before construction was shared by all then we would see a slight shift back to finalisation of design being done upfront, but at the same time, having the flexibility might be the reason more projects can go ahead, so perhaps a compromise from all parties is the best way to go.
– Alan Shepherd